


Daylight Moon

by kjwritings



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Romance, Eventual Katara/Zuko (Avatar), F/M, Gen, Katara as Southern Chief, Original Character(s), POV Katara (Avatar), Past Aang/Katara (Avatar), Post-Canon, Pre-Katara/Zuko (Avatar), none of this bodes well for a fun read but i promise im a comedic relief nutcase, short af chapters bc head empty no thots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28378359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjwritings/pseuds/kjwritings
Summary: "The last time she saw the Fire Lord, he was just one small flash of red in the enormous crowd cheering around them as she and Nonraq, the ground white and perfectly even beneath them, exchanged the ceremonial cups, and her new husband bent down to place a light kiss on her fingers.Early the next day, the Fire Lord was called back home for a general's emergency. There were so many emergencies in their line of work, Toph had remarked at breakfast, and Katara wondered if her friend could sense the weariness of her entire body agreeing.The feeling in her chest, once familiar as the memory of an old summer day, rose, one last time, and disappeared."
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23
Collections: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zutara, Zutara Read, Zutara ♥, best zutara fics, fav avatar fics(2020), zutara





	1. Prologue, Part I

_113 AG_

The wedding ceremony was set to last a month, and the world was put on hold accordingly.

Dignitaries representing every nation, state, and nation-state, from the Avatar to Huu of the Foggy Swamp, made their way down to the Southern Water Tribe for the occasion. Their Chief, after all, had friends in every pocket of the world. Some she'd met in her earliest days of traveling, before the end of the war; others, in later years––after her quiet split from the Avatar––wandering through the nations, alone with the same old purpose. The war was over, yes. But the work never was. There was always another village to advise, another school to build, another hospital to assist.

And then she'd been called back here. Back home, for another sort of service. Another sort of role. The only kind that inevitably lent itself to this grandiose, public affair of a wedding.

It was nothing like the simple spinning romance that used to play in the back of her mind, a blurred face lifting her veil, snow falling all around. The daydream of a girl.

Bu what a long time it'd been, the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe mused, since she'd had time to daydream.

Katara looked out at the ships beginning to pull, one by one, into the harbor.

* * *

The Fire Nation entourage is the last to arrive at the Harbor of Kya, a massive crimson hull of a ship, horns ablast, dozens of fire flags lit up on deck. Katara lifted back the hood of her blue seal cloak, preparing to alight down the fort, bending the snow beneath her feet in one smooth motion.

"What an arrival for the Fire Nation." Nonraq murmured, just behind, his own bending of the snow falling in a crisp, unbroken cadence. His dark, long hair was tied back, save a few strands and the beginnings of a beard flying in the wind. Her fiancé's tone was light.

His tone was _always_ light. The second nephew of Chief Arnook, fourth-in-line (third, after Princess Yue's passing) to the Northern throne since birth, tall and broad-shouldered, yet never hulking, Nonraq moved and spoke with the easy, exclusive grace of those born into royalty. Like Princess Yue. Like Zuko.

Entirely devoid of their softheartedness though. But Katara kept that thought to herself.

After all, had she hesitated for even a second? When he'd presented her with the sparkling necklace––now tied securely around her neck––six months ago at a state dinner in the North, to polite gasps and applause from dignitaries seated around the room. Hakoda and Chief Arnook beaming across from them, everyone feigning surprise (except Sokka, apparently, given the volume of his whooping).

The stone on her betrothal necklace, one of Yue's old friends had whispered to her later, could only be found in a dangerous ice cave to the West of the capital. Three days' journey on foot. (And Nonraq had most _certainly_ sent someone else on the journey, was Katara's immediate impetulant thought.)

But there was no hesitation.

Nonraq was what the Southern Water Tribe needed: a royal son of the North, the smoothest of politicians. A key piece in the many moving coalitions and power plays it had become her duty, since three years ago, to build up and sustain, for the good of her people. And if nothing else, Katara knew duty like the back of her hand. She always had.

She had always had to.

The Southern Chief straightened her shoulders, and glanced back at her fiancé. "You've met the Fire Lord?"

"Not personally, but I've heard plenty from your brother." _If not from you, Chief._ "I'm very curious to meet Zuko–– Ah–– Fire Lord Zuko." He bowed his head slightly, then looked up. There was a curious glint in his blue eyes.

Katara wondered what he was thinking of. Assuredly, more than he let on. That was how he was. That was how they all were.

It didn't matter. It wasn't because of her that Nonraq, son of the North, wanted to know about the Fire Lord. They weren't even friends, the question of lovers aside. They would never truly be. Such was their world, and such would be their marriage.

The side of Katara's mouth twisted imperceptibly.

_The daydream of a girl_

* * *

And there he was, before she could begin to catch her breath, winded from her snowy descent.

_A blurred face_

The first time in three years, right across from her. Nothing but a few meters of white ground separating them.

The Fire Lord rose a little taller than she remembered (although he couldn't have grown, he was already 30, she thought dumbly) in his most formal robes, coming down the black ramp, that old aristocratic slope of his nose guiding the face looking around evenly, taking in the new expanse of the Southern Water Tribe, _her_ Water Tribe, nothing like the little village he had attacked all those moons ago.

Slowly, so slowly, her took it all in, and then, turning his chin downwards, looked down at her. Gold eyes meeting blue.

But before she could blink, General Iroh swooped out from behind his nephew and closed the distance between them in a split second, scooping her up in a bear hug so tight she nearly squeaked in surprise. Besides her, Nonraq, who, she recalled suddenly, she'd never hugged before, shifted slightly, and then Iroh was clapping him on the back, introducing himself with a hearty grin, and they were talking and laughing like old friends as they turned back towards the city, and somewhere in there Nonraq had turned to bow and greet _Fire Lord Zuko_ , but she didn't wait to see what he said back because Arra had suddenly appeared by her side––there was a Waterbending Academy emergency, an accident with several students, my lady, I'm sorry but you must come immediately––and Katara was swept away again, before she could read the look she saw, there in his eyes, for the briefest of moments.

Before she could register the thing once again rising in her chest, back like it was new.


	2. Prologue, Part II

_108 AG_

A face––the flash of a scar––stretched into a boyish smile, 25 this summer and only faintly reminiscent of that glimpse, nearly a decade ago, soft in the green light of Ba Sing Se.

His face, welcoming her back into his palace again and again, and again, between the months she now traveled alone. Who else could she go to? Not Aang, not even when they tentatively began writing to each other again, Aang, who was still healing, for the first time, without her. ( _Because_ of her, she used to suddenly remember, wincing awake at night with the thought). Nor her brother, caught up in his life with Suki and the countless nieces and nephews, happily lost to the hustle and bustle of Republic City, the whirl of a new age, as was Toph and the rest of them.

But Zuko–– well, Zuko was alone too.

* * *

Mai was sick. Mai had been very, very sick, for a year or so now, wasting away under a mysterious consumption-like disease, without cause, without cure, only certainty of a certain end. For not long after the Fire Lady had first grown ill, Katara had brought spirit water from the North Pole to the palace in Caldera to see what she could do for the love of her friend's life.

The illness, Katara had realized with dread, hands hovering in a blue glow over Mai's unmoving form, was everywhere, in every last cell, from the tip of her tapered fingers to the inside membrane of her stomach. She could do nothing.

Knowing the implications of that, and knowing that everyone knew the implications of that, she had avoided Zuko's face for the rest of her and Aang's visit, an otherwise tense trip that would become their last one together.

By the time Katara's visits alone began, Mai was too sick to see anyone except the royal doctors and her husband. Zuko certainly never spoke of it. But she could see the creases around his eyes that only seemed to grow each time she came. How, like clockwork, he would excuse himself when the moon had risen to a certain point in the sky, and disappear back into the royal chambers, sometimes with a physician by his side, sometimes not. The way he had taken to staring into the distance when he thought no one was looking.

Once upon a time, Katara thought, maybe she would have tried to therapize it through with him. Talking, she would have prefaced in her most motherly tone, always helps. Tell me how you feel, Zuko. I think I know how you feel.

And maybe she did know. Just, some things are too lonely to be said aloud.

* * *

And so maybe that began it all, she thought.

A quiet recognition of their partner griefs, a common thread of loss, both their decade's companionship gone. How it bore a refracted resemblance to their very first connection, all those moons ago, under the emerald glow of the crystal caves, quiet revelations of their shared, foundational mother-pain.

All her life, so bound by her wounds, Katara thought.

Never the reason. Only the catalyst.

Her, stepping off her balloon, small in a way she'd never been before. Holding her crossbody bag, her only companion these days, close to her chest. Looking around for someone.

Him, there on the dock. Dressed in his simplest robes, absent of his usual entourage. Tired, expectant, a thin frame against the setting sun. Waiting for her.

The wordless way, each and every time, she ran, and fell into him with the ease of habit and familiarity. Bag thrown to the ground, Fire Lord propriety forgotten, the warmth folding around them like an old friend.

* * *

Again and again, until her life settled into a new pattern: months-long stints in villages, then a visit to Caldera, then another village, then Caldera, again and again and again. Rinse, repeat, without thought, until two summers had gone by. And then it came.

* * *

It was a quiet afternoon in late September. The leaves in the royal courtyard were just beginning to turn golden, beginning to fall in a scatter across the lawn.

The Fire Lord and Master Katara were sitting across from each other, playing a game of Pai Sho, a recently acquired hobby that was just the newest addition to the List of Evidence Zuko Was Trying to Morph Into Uncle Iroh that Suki and Toph had drawn up during their last Gaang dinner (the first one, everyone noted, that both Aang and Katara had attended in some time. It had only been as awkward as expected, which most took to be a good sign.)

Zuko sput down the winning tile: the red rose.

"Hah!" Zuko threw his arms up, golden eyes widening with triumph. He looked up at her, the corner of his lip turning up into a grin, uncharacteristically free of the Fire Lord stateliness he had come to assume in nearly every waking moment, even when it was just the two of them, as it was more and more, whenever Katara was here–– reading his council scrolls over dinner, her poking fun at the stuffy language of the Fire Lord Court and him trying not to smile; dueling until they both glistened with sweat in the courtyard his frazzled attendant had hired an earthbender on call for the sole task of putting back together; slipping out to the city in disguise, on his rare days off that seemed to coincide more and more with her stays in Caldera, giddy and almost silly in the black uniforms from their Southern Raiders mission that invariably earned odd looks from the street merchants and shop-owners. Uniforms they'd both kept and used throughout their late teens and, now, their twenties, every time they wanted to forget they were the Fire Lord and Master Katara for a few hours. One of thos senseless things one solemnly holds onto.

Usually, Katara would have playfully scowled back, thrown a teasing but snide comment that would have then made him challenge her to a match, _let's battle it out the old-fashioned way,_ their matching propensities for competitiveness ignited.

Usually, Katara would have.

But that afternoon, instead, reason unknown, she just looked at him, her friend of ten years.

Taking him in.

The way a few strands of hair escaped from his topknot, falling and framing the gold of his eyes, currently sparkling with amusement in the afternoon light, at her. The outline of his face, sharper now, its old casual boyishness. The black stubble along the side of his jaw, so prickly-looking she could feel them under her curve of the hollow in his throat–– how under the red of his robe, his shoulders broadened and rose into a perfectly royal posture, the awkward slouch of his teenage days long gone.

This man, with a face like home.

(How much had she noticed, quietly, without noticing she had noticed?)

Slowly, so slowly, a scene in the snow began to rise in the back of her mind.

One she thought was long dead, dead years ago, when she had made Aang swallow the fact that her love was not the love he thought it was and his love, well, his love was always first first to the world he had been born to serve, and she couldn't live like that forever, she said, both their faces wet in the misty Southern Air Temple rain.

A face lifting a veil, familiar and different.

A feeling, rising in her chest.

* * *

An hour later, when she had retired to her guest room, heart still thumping, a dignitary dressed in the blue garb of the Southern Water Tribe appeared at her door, bearing the insignia of Water Chief Hakoda.

_Katara, you are the new Southern Water Tribe Chief._

* * *

Her reign began without ceremony, with none of the elaborate fanfare her wedding would one day have. The news had reverberated quickly around the world, drowning out any gossip still echoing after her breakup from Aang three years ago, and then, just as quickly, become yesterday's news.

It had long been assumed, Katara realized, that she would lead one day. Something new swelled in her.

Her days were long, but they passed in a flash of the same things–– pacifying this hunting company with a tax cut. Imploring one of Pakku's thin-lipped proteges (one, if she recalled correctly, that she had bested in her third day of training as a 14-year-old) to fund five more scholarships for the Southern Waterbending Academy. Sitting through council meetings and state dinners with Chief Arnook and various Earth Kingdom dignitaries until her back began to ache like she was already Gran Gran's age. Staying up so late into the night that her seal-wax candle almost burnt to a nib, reading and re-reading centuries of tribal law so she could begin the painstaking process of amending them to fit this new world. Sharply schooling any Northern envoys still entrenched in the sexist traditions of their culture, in a tone that once would have made her blush instead of them. But not anymore.

Because Katara knew, like never before––even when meeting with certain dignitaries she'd rather just ice to the ceiling and call it a day––that this was her birthright. It always had been.

How ironic it was that from a point more distant than she'd ever been, she was beginning to understand Zuko.

* * *

_Chief Katara_ , he addresses her, in his first letter since her coronation. She smiled wryly at the foreign phrase, scrawled in a familiar print on a familiar letterhead.

When she was travelling from village to village, she used to write him letter after letter after letter, scribbling furiously into the night. No one else responded so meticulously to the long, cramped accounts of her projects that blurred into rants, the black ink smeared with tears, or maybe it was sweat.

No one else understood what it was to try and love an endless parade of strangers. In the right way, the most useful way, and assuredly, the most thankless way. So she wrote him incessantly. And Zuko wrote her back. Letters full of steady advice that struck a thoughtful balance between Iroh-isms and the sober practicality a decade on the throne had beat into him.

This new letter was, inaugurally, from one leader to another and filled with official things–– a request to trade new summer crops for a shipment of whale blubber; updated news on a new trove of Water Tribe artifacts being shipped back from the Capital's museum. And then, at the very bottom:

_Katara, I wish I was there to see your coronation. You know this already, but you will be a great Chief._

_I miss you more than you know._

She held the letter close to her chest, the paper clenched tight in her fist. As if somehow, she finally squash the ache there, and with it, the face in the back of her mind playing and playing like a broken movie, carried all the way back from Caldera weeks ago and that she had tried, without use, to quell.

Katara stared into the darkness beyond her lamp. Then, slowly, she dropped her hand, letting the parchment paper flutter down the side of her desk.

She would write back another time.

She never did.

* * *

More of his letters came. Katara never wrote back.

Maybe, she didn't know what to say to the small snatches of his life scribbled between official notes like a casual afterthought, that, just a few months ago, (how much longer it felt!) she would have heard, even shared in, over breakfast in Iroh's old tea room; at a picnic next to the Turtle Duck Pond; walking hand-in-hand with Kiyi and Tom Tom through the bustling morning market.

_The Kyoshi Warriors are in town. Ty Lee was even approved by the doctors to visit Mai this time. It's been nice to have them otherwise too. My usual guards never talk to me, if you remember… they only ever bow in my direction, although that's centuries of training for you, I guess._

_Kiyi has a boyfriend and she won't tell me who. But I'll find out. I am the Fire Lord._

_Uncle is opening a Jasmine Dragon branch in the Capital. He wants to be closer to home, he says._

Maybe it was just that.

* * *

His letters began to dwindle as the weeks since her coronation stretched into months, and then, before she knew it, a year.

The face in the snow slipped further and further in her mind, until it was barely there at all, Katara told herself until she began to believe it, ignoring the faint thing that twinged in her chest.

And then, one day: _Mai's been a lot better. She's up and been able to get around, for a few months now._

_We miss you._

Katara read the short, scrawled lines again, and then twice more.

She motioned to the attendant (she never used to just _motion_ at people) to the side of her chair, who stepped forward.

"Mai –– the Fire Lady is better." She paused. "Arra, would you please prepare a proper gift basket and send it her court in the royal palace? " She tilted her head slightly. "There's still so much to get through before the council meeting tomorrow so I… I trust you can take care of it. Thank you."

She folded up Zuko's letter, and, after tucking it between her robes, turned back to her desk.

* * *

_112 AG_

When the letters have stopped, and Katara has been Chief for two short years now, it's Arra who brings the last piece of news.

"The Fire Lady has passed away, Chief Katara." Katara looked up from where she was leaning against her bedroom window, reading a scroll marked with the Northern Tribe insignia. "Yesterday, in her sleep..." Arra tilted her head slightly. "I will prepare and send a token of condolence on behalf of the Tribe. Will you be attending the funeral, my lady? Should I send word?"

Katara's face was blank in the moonlight.

"I can't miss this upcoming summit with the Northern Chief. We are the closest we've been in _months_ of negotiations to securing his funding for the new waterbending school, as well as that revised trade deal I drafted after yesterday's council meeting. His nephews, who are inclined towards my side on both, will be there. I need–– I'm sure Zuko–– the Fire Lord would understand. I-–" Katara paused.

In the silence, Arra inclined her head, before stepping out. Left alone, the Southern Water Chief returned to her scroll, back to the neat paragraphs of characters crisp and black on the page.

Outside her window, the moon was beginning to set. A small dot against the length of the sky.


	3. Prologue, Part III

_113 AG_

In her faintest, most absurd imagination, he comes by before the wedding.

_Snow falling all around_

Sneaks out to see her, their oldest habit, when they were teenagers pretending to be just that, miscellaneous in the moonlight and their old Southern Raider uniforms, t. His hair still shaggy and undone from its topknot, her hair loopies out, laughing in the window, down the sloping rooftops, breathless in the night; the best of friends and nothing else; one engaged, and it wasn't her, when she still wrote him letters (easy letters, simple letters) in the months and years between.

But, of course, he didn't.

In the whirl of weeks leading up to the main ceremony, Zuko blended wordlessly into the crowd of friends and family around them: Sokka and Suki and their ever-growing, shrieking brood of five kids and counting; Toph mercilessly teasing Aang like he wasn't 26 and a good head taller than her now; Aang, robed in his usual layers of orange and yellow, who after dinner one night clasped her hands earnestly between his and looked her steadily in the eye, their old love long-turned into an easy friendship again, by time and distance if nothing else, and offered up a gentle "Congratulations, Katara. I'm happy for you," before she had laughed and thanked him just as earnestly, then asked him about his newest findings on a newfound Air Bison species, a topic he happily dove into.

The last time she saw the Fire Lord, he was just one small flash of red in the enormous crowd cheering around them as she and Nonraq, the ground white and perfectly even beneath them, exchanged the ceremonial cups, and her new husband bent down to place a light kiss on her fingers.

Early the next day, the Fire Lord was called back home for a general's emergency. There were so many emergencies in their line of work, Toph had remarked at breakfast, and Katara wondered if her friend could sense the weariness of her entire body agreeing.

The feeling in her chest, once familiar as the memory of an old summer day, rose, one last time, and disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading y'all! This marks the end of the prologue, next chapter the actual story arc begins... stay tuned.
> 
> A few S/O's:
> 
> \- to leelow for beta'ing and threatening to leak HAHA if i didn't get over myself and just release it :')
> 
> \- to Naladot's beautiful story "poetry of politics" (https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755517) which really got me thinking about World Leader!Katara and World Leaders!angstyZutara in the first place. Def top 5 fanfics I've read


	4. Republic City, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toph & Zuko, name a more iconic pair. aka here's some comedic relief before i lay the pain on thick again

_114 AG_

**1 Year Later**

When Zuko arrived in Republic City a day earlier than expected for the annual council meeting, Toph Beifong decided she would take it upon herself to keep him entertained. She was due for a break anyways. Slinging metal whips at gang members and new recruits did get old sometimes. Despite what the good people of Republic City thought of their sadistic Police Chief. 

“Couldn’t have picked another landmark to meet at, huh?” Zuko eyed the metal effigy of his 20-year-old self towering over the two of them, nearly 50 feet high. They were both dressed down to simple robes, and blended seamlessly into Central City Station’s ever-bustling crowd.

“Now  _ why _ would I pass up a chance to admire my own artwork?” Toph grinned. “In front of the  _ muse _ himself, no less––” Zuko coughed, the hint of a flush rising to his cheeks. Her grin widened. She punched the Fire Lord’s shoulder lightly. “Ah, as easy to tease as ever, Sparky.” 

“I am not— nevermind.” Zuko rubbed his arm, looking at his friend with a half-exasperated, half-amused expression. “It’s good to see you, Toph. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

“You bet your ass. Although I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen any of you…” Toph paused. “Wait. That’s a lie. I was at the Southern Water Tribe a few weeks ago,” she added on casually. 

Just as she expected, Zuko stiffened, just perceptibly. 

“What for?” His voice was even as ever.

“Some stuff. Boring stuff.” Toph said, deliberatively dismissive. Zuko nodded, and said nothing more. 

Just as she expected. Hm.

A few thoughts flitted quickly in succession through the earthbender’s mind. “Shall we head to the Beifong parlor? My father has insisted that I show the Fire Lord around our newest family establishment.” Toph offered, and they turned, walking out of the sculpture’s shadow. 

* * *

Toph Beifong’s current predicament: whether to be disappointed or gleeful, that, after more than a decade of friendship–– after dozens of enemies and global catastrophes neutralized together––  _ none _ of the blockheads in the Gaang had caught on to just  _ how _ perceptive she could be.

The earthbender was privy to not only your run-of-the-mill facial expressions and body language, but also to things like heartrate, blood pressure, muscle contractions, even the slight wiggle in someone’s stomach or the raising of fine arm hairs. You name it. 

_ Especially _ if she’d been paying attention for a while. 

And she had, in this case. 

For some time now, Toph had know that something was up in the Zuko-Katara department. 

The Fire Lord always stiffened like a petrified bear-otter when the waterbender was even hinted at––okay, it was more subtle than that, she admitted; he was a full grown man now instead of an explosive teenager, but still––and Katara, well… 

That was even more intriguing. 

Sometimes there was the same stiffening, sometimes another kind of tenseness, and most recently, when Toph was at the Southern Pole… 

Nothing at all. Like she was holding her breath. Or had let it go.

But something was up, that much Toph knew. 

She just didn’t know  _ what _ or  _ why _ . And it drove her crazy. 

So by Agni she was going to find out. Right here, right now, in the overly decadent Beifong parlor, sitting across from a fidgeting Fire Lord—who was currently pretending to enjoy tea as part of his concentrated effort in recent years to rebrand himself in the image of Uncle Iroh—Toph Beifong was going to untangle the juiciest, yet most under-the-radar-Gaang Drama of the Decade. She cracked her knuckles gleefully, tossing an innocent smile at her friend. “So, Lord Zuko…”

“Yes?” He answered distractedly, still preoccupied with the art of sipping jasmine tea while pretending not to grimace.

“Wanna  _ enlighten _ me as to what’s up between you and Sweetness?” 

Fuck it. No delicacy. Straight to the punchline. (Not like Toph knew any other way.) 

Zuko coughed into his tea. “What––” The young Police Chief looked at him, her smile curving into a smirk. 

If only the Fire Nation populace could see their Fire Lord now and his famously passionate speeches that had the masses, former colonizers and colonized alike, swooning. So easily reduced to spluttering. It almost made the nonexistent Earth Kingdom patriot within her swell with pride. 

“Oh, come on, I’m blind, not  _ stupid _ .” The Fire Lord, having collected himself, leaned his chin on his folded fingers and looked at his friend, face in the shade.

“Tell me what you mean.” 

“Sure.” 

“Why aren’t you friends anymore?” she asked. Unusually serious. 

If Toph’s upbringing had taught her anything, it was that powerful people? They had friends few and far between. And surely Lord Zuko––crown prince of the Fire Nation at birth––knew the same. And surely, even out of their friend group composed of world leaders, she had always assumed, he would be the one who most felt the same deeply buried, unspoken clinginess to her few true friends that Toph did.

Toph  _ knew _ how close Zuko and Katara once were. There were years when she couldn’t drop by the Fire Nation without Katara being there too. Her airy voice drifting through the halls, her bright laugh and Zuko’s answering chuckle––a sound so rare, in those years. (And even now.) How it lifted the heavy cloud Mai’s worsening condition had cast over the palace. 

And how different it was, when Katara wasn’t there. The heavy disquiet she could taste in the air, that enveloped itself a tight axis around Zuko. That she could sense, distilled as it was, even now, in the slight slump of his shoulders, the way his smile, wide as it was when he saw her, when he laughed at her jabs, never quite reached the wrinkles around his eyes. 

So why…? Toph pondered, frowning.

Zuko had put down his tea cup. He looked up at his friend.

“I’m not sure.” 

The rawness in his raspy tone (in-character as it kinda was for former Resident Drama King) took her by surprise. And at 27, Toph discomfort with “touchy-feely” things was just about the same as it’d always been, and though she’d started this whole line of inquiry, his openness combined with her own runaway thoughts was too much. On reflex, Toph quipped, “You steal her necklace again, Sparky?” 

“Very funny, Toph,” he said sarcastically, shoulders relaxing. She wasn’t sure whether or not he looked relieved that she hadn’t pried further. “No, no I did not.”

“Oh good. As Police Chief of this esteemed metropolis I would have had to make a trans-border report to Nonraq.” Toph paused, her white eyes alight with mischief. 

“And I  _ hate _ that fucker.”

Zuko’s eyebrow rose, disappearing into his shaggy hair. “Oh.”

“What? You don’t?” 

“I’ve only met him once, Toph. Besides, Sokka likes him. He wrote me a whole letter detailing his “manly charm” and “superior ice dodging skills” last year,” Zuko said dryly. 

“And Sokka has rocks for brains. Or at least half the time he does.” Toph snorted. “Okay, I don’t  _ hate _ Nonraq, I suppose. I just don’t trust him one bit.”

“Why?”

“Call it metalbender intuition,” she answered, with a dramatic flair of the wrist. Zuko rolled his eyes, but a small snort escaped him.

Toph grimaced. “No, but seriously. Do you remember the oil fiasco shortly after the war?” Zuko shook his head. “Right. You had your hands full with your crazy sister and the Ozai Society then.

Well, you know what the analysts say these days. 

If they weren’t so isolationist, the Northern Tribe would be have been perfectly poised to be the next Fire Nation-– Fervent nationalism? Check. Steelgrade military? Check. Current political leaders (ahem, Nonraq’s brother) just a  _ little _ too interested in power abroad?  _ Check.  _

No one likes a colonizer.” Zuko winced. Toph raised her hands upwards. 

“Hey, I’m just trying to help you visualize, Fire Lord. Do you see why one wouldn’t be too keen on a Northern Prince?”

“You shouldn’t judge people based on their birthright, Toph,” the Fire Lord scowled lightly at his friend. “Where would I be?”

“Yeah, where  _ would _ you be? Without me? Me, who gave you that chance way back when in the Temple?” She said dramatically. “And basically stopped Sugar Queen from beating you to a pulp?” 

“Oh, right.” The 31-year-old man rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish. “You know I’ll always owe you, Toph.” 

The corner of Toph’s lip curled up. “Don’t mention it, Sparky. ‘Twas all for Uncle Iroh’s sake, not yours.” Zuko looked mildly offended. 

But  _ anyways _ , I hope you see that, clearly, prejudice plays no part in my distaste for the dear old Southern Chief Consort. Or, last I observed, as they apparently refer to him as down there, the Southern Chief,” Toph said grimly. “When they know damn well that Katara and Katara  _ only _ holds that title.” Zuko frowned.

Toph opened her mouth, and closed it.

“But, hey, maybe “pregnant women” are mutually exclusive with “world leaders.” in their minds.”

Zuko blinked. 

“What does that have to do with anything?” Toph stared at him, and slapped her forehead. 

“You’re  _ really fucking dense _ for a Fire Lord, you know that?! I can’t believe your evil yet admittedly genius predecessors masterminded the 100 Year War! (“ _ Why _ must it always come back to that,” came a grumble from the side.)

She’s pregnant! Katara is pregnant!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun dun. how will zuko reacc? how does toph know this (and what went on down in the southern pole anyways??) and where tf is pregnant katara???/
> 
> stay tuned!! and thanks for following along :)


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